You'll need patience, commitment and plenty of time.
This is one of those games that you'll either love or hate. If you love it, you'll commit yourself to it totally. If you hate it, you'll probably have to restrain yourself from throwing something through the TV. So why does this game inspire such polar opinions?
First off, yes, there are some frame-rate and loading problems. However, as I installed to the hard drive, I can't say that I noticed any of these problems to any great extent, except for the occasional pop-in of textures. In fact, when I loaded the game to my hard drive the first time, I became annoyed as the loading screens were not up long enough to read the messages on them (some of these messages are quite useful in regard to gameplay). However, once the screens are up, this is one beautiful game. Light is accurately reflected off surfaces, such as water, lip-synching is unusually good, and the detail given to each of the main characters is meticulous. The use of graphics in this game make the game world a joy to run around in. However, if you're going to play straight from the CD, be prepared for some long loading times and frame-rate issues.
The second point of contention is that this is not an easy game to understand. Rather than having your standard four party members, you have unions, each of which is composed of a number of fighters. You then give these unions commands as to what you want them to do. Generally, you have options to attack normally, use magic (termed as mystic arts) or use weapon attacks (combat arts). Here's the clincher. You can only tell your unions what to do generally. For example, you can tell them to use mystic arts, and unions which have mystic arts may, or may not attack using them, depending on how much AP they have (action points) and an element of random luck. Everything except for normal attacks uses AP. So, once you've given your command to use mystic arts, one, some, or all or your party will use spells to attack the enemy. You don't get to decide which spells they use, but by flicking through the available enemies the mystic art and the person using it may change, giving you a modicum of control over what your unions actually do. This for me, is one of the great points of the game, because this means that rather than taking a character and blindly using one spell turn after turn to level it up, you have to decide which of the available arts on offer is the best one to use. However, many people have found that they're put off by the fact that they can't tell their fighters exactly what to do. At the end of the battle, you'll usually get a few items, and occasionally you'll 'capture' a monster. This monster can either be split for items, or kept whole and sold in cities for money.
Levelling up, as it's known in most RPG's is not obvious in TLR. Your characters do get stronger, you just won't actually see the phrase 'Level Up!' flash across your screen at any point. Instead, a summary after battle will tell you that a particular character has gained HP or a weapon has been strengthened. You can increase your chances of strengthening your characters by increasing you 'battle chain'. The battle chain is a count of how may monsters you have defeated. If you get ambushed or leave the particular area you're in, you battle chain returns to zero. However, be warned, in order to really see the benefits of increasing the battle chain, you'll have to fight for a long time.
The storyline in TLR is pretty standard for an RPG. The evil one wants to take over the world etc. However, doggedly following the storyline will get you into a whole heap of trouble further down the line. Because this game has sidequests, which, despite the name, are necessary if you want to be strong enough to actually beat the game. This is one of the few games where, rather than stuffing sidequests in to bump up the gametime, the game has actually been designed so that you have to at least do a few of them in order to get through the game. Given that gamers have for years had to 'grind' in RPG's in order to beat that strong boss, it's nice to actually have a quest to do while you're at it. Although some of these quests are hard. Really hard. One of the earlier ones in particular gave me problems. I had to grind for twelve hours to get strong enough to beat it. These quests can be missed out, but do so at your peril.
Additionally. this game also has 'rare spawns'. Rare spawns are monsters that are usually much stronger that the rest of the enemies in the area, and will only appear under the right conditions, and even then on a random basis. However, if you can get them to spawn, they offer great rewards for beating them.
Items and money can be found in the field, both from the ever popular 'treasure chests' (no RPG would be complete without them), and by harvesting at certain points in the field using an odd creature that appears to be half rodent, half robot called Mr Diggs. As Mr Diggs, well.... digs, he'll get stronger and find better items and more of them. In each area you get a total number of 'digs', which is reset on your return to the world map. Occasionally, you'll find a 'morsel'. Mr Diggs will eat this, and as a result, will gain another 'dig' and have his dig count reset to max.
I am currently thoroughly enjoying my second playthrough of this game, and with the huge number of characters that can be added and changed around in the unions, I am sure I will do so for many playthroughs in the future.